Prophet Jonas As A Blogger: Open Source Intelligence


Jonas went out of the city, and sat toward the east side of the city: and he made himself a booth there, and he sat under it in the shadow, till he might see what would befall the city. And the Lord God prepared an ivy, and it came up over the head of Jonas, to be a shadow over his head, and to cover him (for he was fatigued), and Jonas was exceeding glad of the ivy. But God prepared a worm, when the morning arose on the following day: and it struck the ivy and it withered. And when the sun was risen, the Lord commanded a hot and burning wind: and the sun beat upon the head of Jonas, and he broiled with the heat: and he desired for his soul that he might die, and said: It is better for me to die than to live. And the Lord said to Jonas: Dost thou think thou hast reason to be angry, for the ivy? And he said: I am angry with reason even unto death. And the Lord said: Thou art grieved for the ivy, for which thou hast not laboured, nor made it to grow, which in one night came up, and in one night perished. And shall not I spare Ninive, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons that know not how to distinguish between their right hand and their left, and many beasts.

Mr. Daniel Butler, Assistant Deputy Director for Open Source in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) said that open source intelligence gathering is basically good research and analysis and that the internet has been a “game changer” in gathering material. This raises new challenges in organizing and prioritizing the material to be analyzed, he said.

Butler, a former Defense Department official and military intelligence officer, and other panelists noted that open sources include a wide variety of information, not only from the media but from academia and other sources. They also predicted that open source intelligence will be increasingly integrated into traditional intelligence analysis that heavily relied on classified sources.

Butler said that the open source program had been impacted negatively by the reduction in the number of foreign correspondents. He said the quantity, breadth and quality of overseas reporting has declined because of the decisions by many news organizations to cut back the number of their correspondents overseas. During the past several years several major newspapers and television networks have eliminated or minimized their foreign correspondents posts, mainly for financial reasons. Butler quipped that one only has to pick up the Washington Post every morning to see how much lighter it is. OPEN SOURCE INTELLIGENCE – An Open Discussion By Michael B. Kraft


The prophet Jonas went out of the city and sat toward the east side of the city: and he made himself a booth there, and he sat under it in the shadow, till he might see what would befall the city.


Blogging done right is the ability to discern correctly those events that are taking place which are far removed from the physical location of the blogger. No more need for on site journalists for open source intelligence. Blogging as an open source intelligence is taken from the life of the prophet Jonas, who went out of the city and sat against it to see what would befall it. Blogging does the same. Joans certainly was a type of open source intelligence for those who wanted to know what would befall the city of Ninive. Jonas did not need to be within the walls of Nivine to know what was going to happen.

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